Always Waiting
by An Ocean Under A Thousand Suns
Summary: A different view of Katniss return from the 74th Hunger Games on how things can never be the same. She looked fine, sometimes she acted fine but she wasn't fine.
1. Home

Prims Pov

The square is crowded; people and news crews hover about like insects drawn toward light, frantic. I am glad today their eyes are off us, the constant buzz of the cameras these last few weeks has been though at first whimsical and dream like is now nothing more than a nuisance, I don't want them here, don't want them to see this not when they have already seen so much. I hear the train before I see it, that lighting fast rod of a sound and suddenly I can't stand still I feel as I did the first night of the games, frightened and scared, nervous and sick. Mother is gripping my hand, it almost hurts but I don't mind, how can I when it shows she is still here, still caring. Stand up straight she says stop moving she says but I can't. I think I might be sick my face is hot, I feel as if all the blood has rushed to my forehead leaving my fingers cold, I have to keep moving them to keep them warm. The noise is getting louder and like the train my thoughts are moving a mile per minute. Will she look different, act different? Who will she live with? Peeta? How is he? What about mom, what will she do? What's freedom like? Will she be mad at me, hate me? This is the thought that has plagued my sleep just below the one about her coming home safe, but now this is the only one left with the ability to kill.

Everybody sees the train at once and in between the trains' stopping and the crowds' yelling there is no greater noise. I can't breathe and mother holds me tight. The train doors finally open showing Katniss and her Peeta and my heart skips a beat, this is it, this is real. I knew they were alive but until now, until I saw them some small part of me must have doubted like a kid playing hide and seek, knowing the other kids were out there just isn't enough, you have to find them to know they didn't leave you when your eyes were closed.

I see her frantic eyes searching for me, searching for us and gripping Peeta's hand as mother grips mine. I catch her eye and relief floods through, she is not mad she could never be all my doubts and fears were for nothing.

"Prim" she screams and runs towards me. I yank my hand from mamma's grasp and run into her arms and she holds me there, both of us crying. This is where she belongs, here with me, never leaving my side, forever. But there is no such thing as forever and soon she has to let go. There are others to see, others to greet. She is welcoming our mother and it is a first time in a long time that my mother truly smiles and Katniss smiles back.

There is something in her face, something even through the happiness and tears I can see, hiding there just under the surface though I don't know what it is, it worries me. Her eyes are searching now, looking for someone I can only guess is Peeta so she doesn't see Gale sneaking up behind her to give her a hug and it scares her when his arms wrap tightly around her. Her face changes once again into something I cannot name and she jumps as the fear floods, doing some weird turn around in Gales arms, throwing hers to his chest and putting distance in between. A moment of recognition and a sigh of relief then she hugs him back but only for a minute and then there is more space between them then there has ever been. I can see the whisper of hurt in his face and then it is gone as he too backs away. Gales face turns dark and it is then that I see Peeta, how he got to Katniss I'm not sure and how he saw her I am lost. She left Gale for Peeta though still something plagued them she looked more comfortable in his arms than she ever did in Gale's. It was then that I knew things had changed, that she had changed. That a part of her would always be in the games, always fighting for her life, a part of her would never come home.


	2. Hunting

*Based on the fact that after the hunger games i find it really hard katniss (or anybody) would be all for hunting again like old times given what she had just been through*

We were walking when I asked, her looking down and I pretending not to notice. It took her too long to answer and then she looked up.

"Gale" There was something in her eyes, pity and pain, her lips were tight, a thin long line, her head moved from side to side and then her back was turned, her feet retreating. I stood there, staring at the girl I loved as she walked away. I caught her; I couldn't help but to catch her. Her hand in mine we spun and then she stopped and glared, yanking her hand out of mine, if she only knew how much that hurt.

"What! I don't want to go hunting and you just attack me! What's the matter with you?" She was breathing heavy, eyes aflame. I should say sorry, it was stupid but I can't, the words won't come, instead its anger, hot and heavy and suddenly I want to hit something, to make someone suffer as much as I have.

"What, you won the games and now have a new house and all the food you can eat so you suddenly don't want to go hunting anymore?" I see her face but I don't look at it, I'm too angry. "What you forget the rest of us are still starving or is it after all that bread you eat that you're just too good for the old stuff."

She doesn't respond, instead she just looks on. I see her face, crippled in anger, in pain, in hurt and I want to take it all back, take away her pain and anger but I know I can't because in order to do that I would have to go back, back to the beginning and I can't do that and so I don't, I just stand there staring dumbly, hoping she will hit me. But she doesn't, she just opens her mouth and closes it, like a fish out of water, she's sinking. I was hoping she would hit me, but instead she just walks away.

Again I wish I can yell, tell her sorry, that I didn't mean it, that I was angry not because she didn't want to go hunting but that she couldn't. That I was losing my grasp on something I never held something I want desperately to hold.

I didn't understand and maybe I never will. It wasn't like her but then again I wasn't sure if I knew what she was like anymore. Things had gotten out of control, spun and crashed into a wall by the bakers house and has been stumbling around there ever since and honestly I don't know how to go and get it back again.

The forest was quiet today, annoyingly so, almost as if they were waiting for her, waiting for her to be among the trees to be home where she belonged not in some mansion in victors village not with some idiot bread boy and a drunkard fool, no here with me. No not with me, the forest but I can't even convince myself of that anymore, I'm as unsure of myself as I am of Katniss.

I don't know what happened but of course I do, the hunger games happened, the capital happened. So much, I can't expect her to be the same but yet I do, selfishly I do.


	3. Winning

The cave floor is hard even for someone like me, I can only imagine how uncomfortable he must feel, someone who grew up with relatively more at least compared to the seam but I sigh, I guess that doesn't matter his wealth kept him out of the games just as well as Prims age did. I can't help but to look at him, asleep on the floor, back arched painfully, leg twisted awkwardly, in an attempt to keep the pain at bay and even uncomfortable as he looks I feel tired. I don't remember the last time I slept or at least slept well and I can feel it like a weight on my shoulders dragging me down but I won't fall, not when I'm so close.

I bring my hands to my knees, trying to keep the warmth that is fleeting and look down at the figure at my feet, although this time I don't see the boy who I'm supposed to be madly in love with but rather the boy that saved me all those years ago, the boy that keeps continuing to though I don't understand why, the boy who when I was configuring how to stay alive was completing on how to die and still be him. He mumbles in his sleep, words I cannot hear and I can't help but remembering that night on the rooftop, it seems like a different life time ago, one where only the thought of killing plagued us and since I'm already in such a pensive mood I don't stop my mind from wondering.

I can't help thinking of how close we are, how close Peeta and I are to winning, that is if Peeta makes it but that is one thought I won't allow myself ponder, we will make it, both of us, together. Winning I think of that word instead, it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth; it's a word I'm not sure I know the definition of anymore. I was sure of it though at one time or another I know that, I believed you either won the games or lost them, lived or died but that was before Rue. I know I should stop this train of thought, the cameras are watching, waiting for me to slip up so I take a deep breath and start again, thinking instead of the boy I killed. It's an easier thought than Rue and one that I scarcely thought of since, only in tallying the deaths but now it hits me full on, like a kick to the stomach, knocking the air out of me and just like that my careful façade falls. I killed a person, a living breathing human being with thoughts and feelings not some unsentimental deer in the forest but someone with friends and family, someone who was just afraid of dying as I was, as I am and until now I didn't care, he was nothing but a number, that's how they saw us, numbers and pawns in their game but what was even worse is that I am no better. I didn't care, I killed him and I didn't care. Everything is falling down like the rain around this cave but just before I'm about to fall a single thought crawls into my head, I can't let them have this, can't let them see me broken and cowardly in pain over their game. Breathe I did what I had to, to survive, breathe there was nothing I could do, breathe I promised Rue, I promised Prim. And this is a promise I would not break, I will go home, I will see her again and I will never leave her. This now I am sure, would be the only win I would get because as Peeta stirs at my feet, I know we can never win these games, we can only survive them.


End file.
